Galileo Galilei: Disputes Destroyed by Visible Certainty

The excellent keynote speech to Microsoft's Machine Learning & Data Science Summit 2016 by Dr. Edward Tufte The Future of Data AnalysisThe Future of Data Analysis came with a handout, alas not available to a wider audience. Garr Reynolds links the Quartz guide to bad data in his summary on Presentation Zen and most of the other references can be found on edwardtufte.com directly, like e.g. the Swiss map.

One of the many take aways for me is the quote by Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642)

what was observed by us in the third place is the nature or matter of the Milky Way itself, which, with the aid of the spyglass, may be observed so well that all the disputes that for so many generations have vexed philosophers are destroyed by visible certainty, and we are liberated from wordy arguments.